Monday, January 26, 1998Last modified at 12:46 a.m. on Monday, January 26, 1998

Juvenile sparks controversy by smoking in TYC facility

CORPUS CHRISTI (AP) - A 17-year-old juvenile parolee ignited a controversy when he decided to smoke a cigarette in the restroom of a Texas Youth Commission halfway house.

The youth wound up in jail, prompting questions about the application of the state's new misdemeanor law against tobacco use by minors.

Corpus Christi police Capt. Gene Frobish said officials at the York House TYC halfway house called officers Saturday to report the boy had been caught smoking a cigarette in a restroom.

"They wanted us to arrest him because he was 17," Frobish told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. "When we told him we wouldn't, that we generally just issue citations for things like this, they went ahead and wrote up the paperwork to revoke his parole right then and there."

The teen was arrested and taken to the Nueces County Jail.

The boy, who was not identified, will remain in the county jail until a parole revocation hearing and would then likely be sent back to a TYC lockup.

"Nobody ever intended to send a kid to jail for smoking a cigarette," Frobish said.

Homer Gonzalez, York House weekend coordinator, told police the boy flushed the cigarette down the toilet. Gonzalez said the boy was arrested for an in-house rules violation.

York House employee Lionel Trevino said Sunday that Superintendent Bart Caldwell was the only person who could comment further about the incident. Caldwell will not be available until today, he said.

Joe Alley, first assistant chief juvenile probation officer for Nueces County, said he had never heard of a juvenile being arrested for smoking a cigarette.

"That's a weird case," Alley said. "It sounds like they were just waiting to get something on this guy.

"He was probably giving them a bunch of grief, and so they figured out this would be the way to put him in the county jail, I guess," Alley said.

TYC officials told the arresting officers that the teen-ager was the third one at the facility whose probation had been revoked for smoking, Frobish said.

It has been a Class C misdemeanor fin Texas since September for anyone under 18 to buy, possess or consume tobacco.